The first (and likely last) product to be released in 7-card "Beyond Boosters" (a worse approximation for a real booster than Beyond meat is for hamburger made from beef), Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed gets roughly 100 cards in an environment not intended either for draft or Commander precons, and join LotR as one of the only UB sets with Modern legality. The resulting designs, therefore, have few of the normal constraints one would find in a preconstructed deck or a draft set. How has this impacted their Cubeability? Let's find out!
Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector is my clear favorite so far from the set. It contributes to my ever-growing Legendaries-matter theme in white, is a totally respectable 2-power vigilant flier for 2 mana as a baseline, and has some interesting gameplay loops available to it. Even simply the ability to chump block and exile itself seems like it'll come up quite a lot. Very excited to play with this eagle.
Become Anonymous is the height of story-equity for Cube night. Sure, you can put it in your cheaty deck and include brainstorm to get a big Eldrazi out of it, but I like it as a reactive way to save your all-star from a removal spell and then get to play a shell game with your opponent. I've always loved cards like Camouflage and Illusionary Mask and now we have a Cube-friendly version of the effect!
Shay Cormac, hate bear extraordinaire. I don't run much hexproof or protection for gameplay reasons, but this still has quite a bit of utility in my Cube - 47 cards is a lot!! Use the filter "o:hexproof OR o:indestructible OR o
rotection OR o:shroud OR o:ward" to see what it's like in your list, but there's quite a few effects, both permanent and temporary, that this helps you play around. I know some Cube curators don't like the tit-for-tat "I counter your countermeasure to my defensive measure" style of gameplay, but I find the drama from Shadowspear to be fun and this seems like a pretty reasonable option for Orzhov across a lot of power bands that I'll be trying out for sure.
Basim Ibn Ishaq is the last of my serious considerations at the moment, but a good one. I'm currently running Lazav, Wearer of Faces and...it's hard to not just prefer this overall. I like drawing cards. I like getting evasion. I like the slith mechanic on a card like this. It only seems worse when next to the recently-released Psychic Frog...but I can maintain a reasonable delta between my guild sections if need be.
Ezio, Brash Novice is an incredibly clean design. I wish the level-up had slightly more payoff or he started as a 2/2 for my own Cube's sake, but I think this is a slick card for the right environment.
If you can ignore the Assassin trinket text, Haytham Kenway is a more compelling card than you may have realized at first blush. While I wish he had 4 toughness to get out of Bolt range, a +2/+2 bonus is a back-breaking lord ability that makes it worthwhile even with only a few other knights in your deck, and I think you'd all be surprised just how many high-impact knights you run (Haakon, Stromgald Scourge is coming back to my Cube in short order, I can feel it). The lord bonus makes the fact that you'll be less inclined to swing in with your Journey to Nowhere creature sting a little less. Not for every environment, but a great option I'm glad to have.
The Capitoline Triad is a neat build-around that's not hard to pull off in the right list. I normally wouldn't like emblems on a creature like this, but it's flashy and fun and makes it feel other-worldly in a way that's distinct from other big colorless gods like the Eldrazi.
If we didn't just get two incredible black 2-drops in MH3, Ezio Auditore da Firenze would be on my list. I love the threat of activation for building around it as a five-color card, and I love the stat line to help keep up with the general power escalation of creatures in my Cube. My initial issue of free running being almost wholly trinket text here is less of an issue with both the (very slight) increase to assassins that my Cube will have and the fact that, yeah, probably not running my boy Ezio at this rate.
Hunter's Bow is a sweet card. Bite spells continue to be on the cusp, and while we can get 1-mana versions of this effect at sorcery speed now, I'm reasonably interested in a two-mana version of the effect that leaves behind a buff in the form of an artifact. I just wish the artifact was a little more meaningful...sure it's cheap to equip, but ward 2 and reach are pretty marginal upgrades.
I've tried a few versions of this effect before, but Hidden Footblade is my favorite so far. The +1/+0 and first strike makes it a much more reasonable combat trick, the addition of haste makes it a boon to a broader range of decks, and the lower equip cost makes it feel less bad to reequip. Still wish it cost just 1, though. Will consider testing!
Compares only slightly unfavorably to Merry, Esquire of Rohan, a card I am pretty happy to run right now. As I said before, I support an increasingly-strong legends-matter theme centered in white and stretching out to all 5 colors, so this effect seems reasonably suited to my environment, but I think I needed one extra ability to make it feel good entering combat itself to get there for me. If it didn't restrict to non-token, it could be busted with all the artifact trinkets running around these days...which is certainly why that wasn't the case here! Cool card though.
Havi, the All-Father is sick. I'm pretty happy with Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second as my Naya card, but I would be pretty happy with Havi worst-case. He's generally going to be indestructible, and I love his second ability for both my artifacts theme and my legends theme.
Perhaps most importantly, this set has some of my favorite basics I've seen in a long time...ignoring their awful frame:
Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector is my clear favorite so far from the set. It contributes to my ever-growing Legendaries-matter theme in white, is a totally respectable 2-power vigilant flier for 2 mana as a baseline, and has some interesting gameplay loops available to it. Even simply the ability to chump block and exile itself seems like it'll come up quite a lot. Very excited to play with this eagle.
Become Anonymous is the height of story-equity for Cube night. Sure, you can put it in your cheaty deck and include brainstorm to get a big Eldrazi out of it, but I like it as a reactive way to save your all-star from a removal spell and then get to play a shell game with your opponent. I've always loved cards like Camouflage and Illusionary Mask and now we have a Cube-friendly version of the effect!
Shay Cormac, hate bear extraordinaire. I don't run much hexproof or protection for gameplay reasons, but this still has quite a bit of utility in my Cube - 47 cards is a lot!! Use the filter "o:hexproof OR o:indestructible OR o
rotection OR o:shroud OR o:ward" to see what it's like in your list, but there's quite a few effects, both permanent and temporary, that this helps you play around. I know some Cube curators don't like the tit-for-tat "I counter your countermeasure to my defensive measure" style of gameplay, but I find the drama from Shadowspear to be fun and this seems like a pretty reasonable option for Orzhov across a lot of power bands that I'll be trying out for sure.Basim Ibn Ishaq is the last of my serious considerations at the moment, but a good one. I'm currently running Lazav, Wearer of Faces and...it's hard to not just prefer this overall. I like drawing cards. I like getting evasion. I like the slith mechanic on a card like this. It only seems worse when next to the recently-released Psychic Frog...but I can maintain a reasonable delta between my guild sections if need be.
Ezio, Brash Novice is an incredibly clean design. I wish the level-up had slightly more payoff or he started as a 2/2 for my own Cube's sake, but I think this is a slick card for the right environment.
If you can ignore the Assassin trinket text, Haytham Kenway is a more compelling card than you may have realized at first blush. While I wish he had 4 toughness to get out of Bolt range, a +2/+2 bonus is a back-breaking lord ability that makes it worthwhile even with only a few other knights in your deck, and I think you'd all be surprised just how many high-impact knights you run (Haakon, Stromgald Scourge is coming back to my Cube in short order, I can feel it). The lord bonus makes the fact that you'll be less inclined to swing in with your Journey to Nowhere creature sting a little less. Not for every environment, but a great option I'm glad to have.
The Capitoline Triad is a neat build-around that's not hard to pull off in the right list. I normally wouldn't like emblems on a creature like this, but it's flashy and fun and makes it feel other-worldly in a way that's distinct from other big colorless gods like the Eldrazi.
If we didn't just get two incredible black 2-drops in MH3, Ezio Auditore da Firenze would be on my list. I love the threat of activation for building around it as a five-color card, and I love the stat line to help keep up with the general power escalation of creatures in my Cube. My initial issue of free running being almost wholly trinket text here is less of an issue with both the (very slight) increase to assassins that my Cube will have and the fact that, yeah, probably not running my boy Ezio at this rate.
Hunter's Bow is a sweet card. Bite spells continue to be on the cusp, and while we can get 1-mana versions of this effect at sorcery speed now, I'm reasonably interested in a two-mana version of the effect that leaves behind a buff in the form of an artifact. I just wish the artifact was a little more meaningful...sure it's cheap to equip, but ward 2 and reach are pretty marginal upgrades.
I've tried a few versions of this effect before, but Hidden Footblade is my favorite so far. The +1/+0 and first strike makes it a much more reasonable combat trick, the addition of haste makes it a boon to a broader range of decks, and the lower equip cost makes it feel less bad to reequip. Still wish it cost just 1, though. Will consider testing!
Compares only slightly unfavorably to Merry, Esquire of Rohan, a card I am pretty happy to run right now. As I said before, I support an increasingly-strong legends-matter theme centered in white and stretching out to all 5 colors, so this effect seems reasonably suited to my environment, but I think I needed one extra ability to make it feel good entering combat itself to get there for me. If it didn't restrict to non-token, it could be busted with all the artifact trinkets running around these days...which is certainly why that wasn't the case here! Cool card though.
Havi, the All-Father is sick. I'm pretty happy with Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second as my Naya card, but I would be pretty happy with Havi worst-case. He's generally going to be indestructible, and I love his second ability for both my artifacts theme and my legends theme.
Perhaps most importantly, this set has some of my favorite basics I've seen in a long time...ignoring their awful frame:
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logos in the title of this thread is more obnoxious than all of the draft chaff they’re including in this non-draftable set.
